


Someone to Stay

by LilyEllison



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Foggy Nelson/Marci Stahl mention, Minor Frank Castle/Karen Page, Past Matt Murdock/Elektra Natchios, Post-Season/Series 03, Romance, Second Chances, but at least there's kissing??, not enough fic, post-The Punisher Season 2, too much meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 02:09:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18043448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilyEllison/pseuds/LilyEllison
Summary: Karen and Matt find their way back together. Post-DDS3.





	Someone to Stay

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for this ship and I don't have a beta yet, so apologies if I'm not quite hitting the right notes. I didn't really ship them until the end of Season 3 and I really love their other relationships as well, so this reflects that (I hope?).

Karen has always been fairly hands-on with Matt. He likes that about her — the way she's quick with a reassuring hand on his arm, a hug when he feels like he's drowning.

But lately, it's been different. Her touches linger. Her voice is a little lower, a little quieter when she's speaking to him. One day, she runs her fingers through his hair and the beating of his own heart drowns out the world for a moment.

"There. All better," she says, and he can feel the way she cocks her head to the side to evaluate his look. "Can't go to court all rumply."

Her hand is warm on his shoulder and she's close enough to kiss. He can taste the coffee on her tongue, feel the subtle quickening of her pulse as the moment stretches.

This can't be real. It can't be happening.

It's been many months since Fisk went back to prison, and their lives have been nothing close to simple since. But Matt tells Karen and Foggy every day exactly what he did the night before. It's part of their morning routine — a standup meeting with coffee, day in and day out. Matt talks about his extracurricular activities, Foggy runs down their cases and Karen details what she's digging for and where. Maybe it doesn't make them safer, maybe it doesn't stop any of them from worrying, but at least it gives them a daily opportunity to tell each other to be careful. To affirm that the days of keeping secrets are over.

Matt has never been more content. But the sense of impending disaster is unavoidable. Calm always, always means storm.

So Karen has him nervous.

He's given up on pretending to himself that he's not in love with her. He hadn't been before, not really, too caught up in his nightly drama and Elektra to let himself get in that deep. He'd cared about Karen, intensely, but Elektra had still worn his heart on her sleeve. Karen hadn't fully known him then — he'd been too afraid to let her.

But now…

Part of him is still mourning Elektra's loss — part of him will always be mourning Elektra — but the pain has lessened, with prayer and with time. And knowing that Karen had never given up on him, that she kept the home fires burning for him, quite literally, had touched him deeply. She was angry at him — and he deserved that — but she hadn't abandoned him, even after seeing his worst.

It was only once they stopped trying to hide the broken pieces of themselves that he could truly understand how perfectly they fit. He's trusted Karen and Foggy with his identity, with his life, but it goes beyond that now. As dramatic as it sounds, he trusts Karen with his soul.

And, deep down, he wants it all with her — wants everything — but it's too late. He's ruined any chance he had at being more than the closest of friends. And maybe that's how it's supposed to be. Maybe friendship is better, even. Maybe there's less chance that he'll finally figure out how to drive her away for good.

But that doesn't mean it isn't hard to breathe sometimes when she's near. That his heart doesn't ache for her in the early morning hours, alone in his bed.

That he doesn't feel like shit on the day he finds out about Frank Castle.

That's the worst part of the new honesty policy at Nelson, Murdock & Page. Harder even than opening up about Elektra, about wanting to die, about everything. The day after Karen saw Frank in the hospital, she told them about it — haltingly and sadly, but she'd done it. And that night, over whiskey at Josie's, it had been as obvious as the smell of stale beer that Karen Page had a wounded heart.

Matt forced himself to push through the pain and the disappointment and, yes, even the anger that he couldn't help feeling. To be there for Karen in the way she deserved. He hadn't made her talk more about it — some things were too much even for them. But he'd offered. He'd made sure to check in with her as the weeks went on. He of all people knows what it's like to try to claw someone away from a war and fail. Fail miserably. Utterly. Totally.

But that was months ago now, and Karen's voice sounds whole again. She seems to have healed, as much as that is ever possible for them.

And she is touching him.

"You're going to be late," she says finally, with a breathy quality in her tone that makes his stomach flip. She lets her hand drift down his arm as he moves away.

He is almost to the door before he trusts himself to say anything and even then, all he can manage is, "Thanks," as he turns back to her with a little smile.

This can't be happening.

†††

Later that week, Foggy bails on their planned drinks at Josie's. He's cake-tasting with Marci for what is shaping up to be the wedding of the decade.

So it's just Matt and Karen who end up on neighboring barstools, laughing and talking well into the night. And when they step out into the soft air, it's too pleasant to do anything but wander.

Karen leans into him until he takes her arm. "Gotta keep up appearances," she says with a laugh. They walk without speaking until, reluctantly, they end up at his door.

"This was fun," she says, and she's moving close to hug him, her arms wrapping around his waist.

His heart feels full to bursting, but he tells himself to stay calm. To ignore his own senses. He's reading too much into this. He has to be.

"Matt," she murmurs into his ear, her cheek against his. "Would it be OK if…"

And he turns his head just a little and she is kissing him, every cell of his body joining in a chorus of joy. Her lips are soft and she wraps him in the warmth of home. Her mouth slants against his, deepening the kiss, and desire slides down his spine.

One of her hands finds his cheek and the other curls around his neck and he is lost, feeling woozy and light.

And then the warning blare of danger sounds in his head and he pulls away abruptly, crashing them both back down to earth.

"What's wrong?" she says, breathless.

"What are we doing?"

"It's not obvious?" she asks, her fingers coming up to press against her lips.

"Is this…is this what you really want?" His hand clutches into a fist at his side. He's unable to keep the little desperate edge out of his voice. "Because I don't think I could take it if…"

"Hey," she says soothingly. "Let's go inside and talk." And she takes his hand and leads him to his door.

Once they are in his apartment, he strips off his jacket and his glasses, feeling restless, tied in knots. She sits on the couch.

"Do you want a drink?" he asks, not sure how to begin.

"No," she says. Her hand pats the leather next to her. "Just come sit."

So he does.

"I'm sorry." She reaches out to touch his arm. "I guess I was jumping the gun. I just thought…"

"It's not that I don't…" He sighs. "It's…I don't want to lose you."

"You haven't yet. And you've tried pretty damn hard."

He smiles a bit painfully at that. "I know. But if…if we're going to do this, Karen, I want to really do this. No holding back. Not anymore."

"And you don't think I feel the same way?"

"I thought…" He stands up, needing to take a few steps away to get the words out. "I thought I screwed up too much. I thought that you moved on. To…someone else."

Her head ducks down and his breath catches on the sharp edge of disappointment.

"I—I won't pretend there aren't feelings there," she says. "In a way, I even think that it helps. That in some sense, I understand even better now. What you've been through. But I didn't kiss you lightly, Matt. I'm making a choice."

He can hardly believe what she is saying, but he knows she is telling the truth. And it scares the hell out of him.

"You really think I deserve another chance?"

"Probably not. But a wise person told me once that few of us get what we deserve."

He is having trouble remembering to breathe. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Then it doesn't work. I don't have any guarantees." She crosses the room until she is standing in front of him. "But I've seen how hard you've tried…to open up. And I think, after all we've been through, that this could be—"

"Everything," he says. "Karen, this could be everything."

"Yes," she whispers, moving into his welcoming arms.

And some part of him is warning that they should take it slow, start from the beginning again. But she touches her lips to his once more and his ability to be sensible is washed away by the overpowering desire to show her just how much she means to him.

Their kisses before this have always been a little tentative, a little restrained, but all the walls between them have been torn down now, brick by brick, with their own ragged, bleeding hands. There's nowhere to hide anymore. And he doesn't want to.

What he wants is to touch her everywhere at once, but he settles for sliding his hands into her silky hair. She is taking his breath away with her kisses, her tongue sliding blissfully against his own. He runs his fingertips down the side of her face, a whisper over her skin. Intoxicated by the feel of her, he continues along the long line of her neck, down, down, to dance over her collarbone.

She gasps a little into his mouth and he pulls back.

"Is it OK?" he asks. "To touch you?"

"Yes," she answers, almost before his words are even out, and he smiles at the memory it brings up for him.

"We could wait."

"I don't want to."

And he has to kiss her again.

For her part, she is tugging on the knot of his tie, pulling it loose. He breaks away from her lips long enough to yank it over his head and toss it away. She tackles his shirt buttons next and his body responds with an almost agonizing enthusiasm. He grips her shoulders, suddenly worried this is all just a particularly lifelike fantasy. But she feels real.

"I've been waiting a long time for this," she says playfully, as her hands slip beneath his now-open shirt to smooth over his chest. "Promise you're not going to leave me hanging this time?"

He can hear the smile in her voice, but he sobers, remembering a night on her front stoop, in what feels like a different life.

"You know why I did, don't you?"

"Afraid these would give you away?" She leans down to brush her lips over one of his scars.

"That was part of it," he says, his eyes sliding closed at her touch. "I know I was being a real asshole, but even I couldn't be with you like this when I was hiding so much from you."

"And now?" Her palm cups his jaw. "No more secrets?"

He shakes his head, turning into her hand to kiss it. "No more." In one swift motion, he sweeps her up into his arms. "But I still have a lot to make up for."

He feels her smile into his neck as he strides across the apartment, carrying her to his bed.

†††

He's spent so many of his nights in hell that waking up in heaven is disconcerting. Even before he is fully conscious, he's aware of the fine-spun strands of her hair across his chest, her whiskey-and-roses scent, the music of her breathing, of her heartbeat.

This first thing he does is mouth a silent prayer of thanks.

Then he lets it all come rushing back to him — how it felt to give himself over to her, body and soul, to pledge his devotion with lips and tongue and hands, to feel the exquisite heat of her all around him as she let herself go to abandon. 

The thought of waking with Karen in his arms every morning is suddenly too much. It chokes him. His mind is sinking into a black hole of panic — _how can I deserve this? how long before she leaves?_ — when he feels her stir.

"Matt?" Her voice is like warm honey. She presses a sleepy kiss into his chest and snuggles in closer, and it's the exact same feeling as when he finds a safe spot to land from an unexpected fall.

He will not let fear ruin this before it can truly begin.

He kisses her hair, her forehead, and he knows she's smiling.

"Is this real or a dream?" she murmurs.

"Both," he says. "It's both."


End file.
